Bureaucratic

Capitalism and the Immigration Detention

Complex
Global Detention Project Working Paper No. 9

By Matthew Flynn

June 2015

About the Global Detention Project

The Global Detention Project (GDP) is a non-profit research centre based in
Geneva, Switzerland, that investigates the use of detention in response to global
migration. The GDPs aims include: (1) providing researchers, advocates, and
journalists with a measurable and regularly updated baseline for analysing the
growth and evolution of detention practices and policies; (2) facilitating
accountability and transparency in the treatment of detainees; and (3)
encouraging scholarship in this field of immigration and refugee studies.
Global Detention Project
Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/
Phone: +41 (0) 22 548 14 01
Email: admin@globaldetentionproject.org

About the author

Matthew B. Flynn is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies at
Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. His research focuses on political
economy, globalization, and human rights. He is the author most recently of
Pharmaceutical Autonomy and Public Health in Latin America: State, Society, and
Industry in Brazils AIDS Program (Routledge 2015).

The Global Detention Project Worker Paper Series is edited by Michael Flynn. This series
is made possible in part by the generous support of the Open Society Foundations.

Global Detention Project 2015

Bureaucratic Capitalism and the Immigration Detention Complex

By Matthew Flynn1
Abstract: The work of post-structuralist political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1998,
2005) has had a major influence on the study of immigration detention in Europe and
elsewhere. In particular, his concepts homo sacer (bare life) and zones of exemption
depict the growth of immigration detention practices as an expression of sovereign
power through inclusive exclusion. In other words, states demonstrate their power to
confer rights upon their citizens by denying those rights to others. This paper argues that
post-structuralist approaches to the study of immigration detention present a number of
theoretical and conceptual problems. Post-structuralist analyses focusing on discourses
divorced from actors present teleological problems in terms of theory. Additionally, poststructural accounts of detention centres using concepts such as homo sacer and
Banoptican (see Bigo 2007) tend to conflate human rights and citizenship rights, which
does not hold up empirically because many asylum seekers and irregular migrants still
have access to legal redress. In contrast to post-structural accounts, the notion of
bureaucratic capitalism developed by sociologist Gideon Sjoberg (1999) provides an
analytical framework that is both critical and non-deterministic in explaining the motives
of many actors involved in detention regimes. Specifically, immigration detention can be
explained by employing conceptual frameworks used to assess the corporate-state
nexus; human agency; rationalization processes like specialization and division of
labour; hierarchy, responsibility, and blameability; and secrecy systems. Sjobergs mesolevel theory provides critical insights into detention regimes in the United States and
Europe as well as the role of private- and public-sector interests seeking rents.
Moreover, focusing on the organization of detention helps reveal the causes of human
rights violations as well as their possible redress.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the International Social
Theory Consortium, University of Cambridge, 17-19 June 2015 (http://socialtheory.org/2015-annual-
conference.html). The author would like to thank Ted Brimeyer, Jinrong Li, Heidi Altman, Joanna
Schreiber, and Michael Flynn for their comments and suggestions, as well as the Global Detention Project
for its assistance in preparing this paper as a GDP Working Paper and Danielle Ebanks for her research
assistance. Any errors are those of the author.
2

Introduction
Although it remains very much a contested issue, many observers have concluded that
deterrence policies and tactics employed by wealthy, advanced capitalist states of the
West will not over the long term curtail efforts by migrants and asylum seekers to make
perilous journeys across international borders in search of safe havens and better living
conditions (Sampson 2015). According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(Edwards 2011:1), for example, there is no empirical evidence that the prospect of
being detained deters irregular migration, or discourages persons from seeking asylum.
Further, government policies and international aid programs appear unable to stem
todays age of migration (Castles, Haas, and Miller 2013). Recent estimates show
international migrant stocks rising from 154 million in 1990 to 231 million in 2013 as total
migrant flows have more than doubled from an average of 2 million per year between
1990 and 2000 to about 4.6 million annually the following decade (OECD-UNDESA
2013).
A persons decision to migrate is driven less by the migration policies of destination
countries than by deeper push factors such as social change, political disruption, and
concerns over personal security (Castles 2003). In addition, there is some evidence to
indicate that when certain states employ so-called alternatives to detention (or rather,
employ polices that fall short of detention), fewer than one in ten asylum seekers and
deportation-based detainees who have been released from custody actually disappear
(Edwards 2011).
Nevertheless, the lack of evidence concerning the efficacy of detention and other
deterrence policies and the existence of cheaper non-custodial measures to prevent
absconding has not reduced expenditures on immigration control in most major
immigration destination countries. In fact, governments continue to commit ever-larger
budgets to this. For example, between 2007 and 2013 the European Union slated four
billion euros, or 60 percent of its total Home Affairs budget, to immigration control
measures, despite regional economic austerity. This amount does not comprise the
additional funding spent by individual member states. Spain, for example, increased its
migration control budget to one billion euros between 2006 and 2009 (Andersson
2014:37). The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had an operating
budget of $2.9 billion for detention and deportation in fiscal year 2009 alone (Immigration
and Customs Enforcement 2009). The amount the U.S. federal government spends
strictly on detention more than doubled between 2005 and 2010, and peaked at US$2
billion in 2012 (see Figure One).

Figure One: Cost of Detention in US$ Billions and Number of Detainees in the United
States, 2005-2014

$2.50

600,000

500,000

$2.00

400,000
$1.50
300,000
$1.00
200,000
$0.50

100,000

$0.00

0
2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Detained Population

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Cost of Detention in Billions

Sources: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 2011. ERO Facts and Statistics. Retrieved May 7, 2015
http://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/reports/ero-facts-and-statistics.pdf; Department of Homeland Security.
Annual Performance Report 2012-2014 and Congressional Budget Justification. Years 2012 and 2015.
(Line Item DRO - Custodial Operations.); and Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse
University. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Budget Expenditures FY 2005 - FY 2010. Retrieved
May 7, 2015. http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/224/include/3.html

Due to increased spending, the capacity for holding non-citizens in administrative

detention has jumped exponentially. In the U.S., there were 7,500 beds in 1995, a figure
that increased to more than 30,000 by 2009 (Immigration and Customs Enforcement
2009). In 2009, ICE reported that 378,582 people were placed in custody or supervision,
with daily averages of 30,000 non-citizens located in 300 facilities and an additional
19,000 in alternative detention programs. While similar data has thus far not been made
available for the entire European Union, according to one estimate, as of 2012 there
were 473 detention centres located throughout Europe and bordering countries as of
2012, an increase from 324 in 2000 (Migreurop n.d.).
This rapid increase in immigration detention funding and capacity is a puzzle. Why have
states opted for this course of action despite the fact that there is little or no evidence
demonstrating its long-term efficacy or cost effectiveness? Who are the actors involved
in the management of these people and what are their interests? What does immigration
detention tell us about the role of complex organizations who view human bodies as raw
material (Welch 2002)? I argue that post-structuralist accounts of immigration detention
obscure more than they illuminate and depoliticize more than address problems
associated with detention. Instead, I argue that the central issue concerns the operations
and role of complex organizations in modern society, employing in particular the
perspective of bureaucratic capitalism developed by Gideon Sjoberg (1999). Such an
4

approach can help provide an actor-focused perspective with respect to organizational

arrangements geared towards revenue generation. In contrast to post-structuralist
accounts, Sjobergs meso-level analysis better elucidates the contemporary
manifestation of global capitalism to analyse immigrant detention as an industry instead
of just a metaphor. In effect, warehousing human bodies for financial gain becomes the
central problematic.
Post-Structuralist Perspectives on Immigration Detention
Post-structural literature on detention tends to focus on concepts and issues related to
sovereign power, legal discourses of control, and spatial-cognitive boundaries (Bigo
2007; Mountz 2011; Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2004; Tsoukala 2011). These authors
derive their conceptual framework from Foucaults notion of biopolitics and, more
specifically, the work of political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005). Two of
Agambens concepts play a central role in discussions of immigration detention: homo
sacer, a term he borrows from Roman law (in which it refers to a banned person) to
denote depoliticized life, which contrasts with the political life of the citizen; and zones of
exception, which are typified in his discourse using the term camp. In his understanding
of the development of states, Agamben argues that politics is constructed around
notions of who belongs within the protections- and rights-conferring institutional arena of
the state and those who do not. The latter become the object of state power through
death and abuse in the zones of exception. Through this citizen/non-citizen dichotomy,
sovereignty is exercised by inclusive exclusion, by acting upon itself of what it is not. In
other words, the creation of zones of exemption, the creation of bare life, is a necessary
part of the creation of state power.
Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (2004) apply the Agambenian framework to the cases of
immigrant detention in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. They point to two aspects of
Agambens writings to bolster their argument: First, that the refugee, although an ideal
type of homo sacer, should paradoxically be thought as being an integral part of the
nation-state system, which for Agamben involves discursive efforts to delimit the
meaning of being human. Accordingly, the refugee becomes a controllable figure that
can be held in discursive stasisthe meaning and identity of the refugee may be created
according to the needs and whims of sovereign law (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr
2004:41). Through the creation of a refugee status conferred by international norms, the
state can restrict refugee rights in order to demonstrate sovereignty.
Bigo (2007) also analyses political discourses surrounding immigration detention by
refocusing Foucaults interpretation of the panoptican. Instead of a system of
governmentality through which everyone in a community is equally submitted to
processes of surveillance and control, the banoptican deals with the notion of
exception, and the difference between surveillance for all but control of only a few (Bigo
2007:6). The ban thus applies to issues related to security and construction of otherness.
Specifically, the globalization of capital, information, and people disrupts the traditional
role of the nation-states boundaries. In its place, the ban operates within and around
geographical boundaries but has the same intent of constructing zones of exclusion. The
difference between the state of exception and the ban is that the state of exception is
the only visible moment of the Ban, the moment where arbitrariness is not a routine. But
in the Ban the norm is the routine of the exception (Bigo 2007:13). While refugee camps
represent exceptional circumstances for exercising state power to exclude a group of
people, the banoptican refers to the creation of permanent zones of exception,
normalizing the permanent control of a designated group of outsiders by criminalizing
illegal residence. The housing of terrorists suspects in Guantanamo, the proliferation of
detention centres and international waiting zones, and the growth of their inversethe
5

gated neighbourhoodall represent the permanent derogation that is a part of liberal

governmentality (Bigo 2007).
Tsoukalas analysis of transit zones and detention centres builds on both Agamben and
Bigo. New forms of controls of foreigners represent a distinct break from Foucaultian
views of the panoptican and instead represent the creation of a new legal framework and
different technology of discipline covering the control of time and space through the
control of human flows rather than through immobilized human bodies (Tsoukala
2011:187). She argues that normalizing states of exception by controlling human flows of
illegal migrants corresponds with the construction of a European identity and European
state, as evidenced by the European Unions Schengen Agreement eliminating Europes
internal borders while strengthening its external borders.
Lastly, Mountz (2011) identifies the special role of islands for the sovereigns interest in
promoting security at a distance, biopower through secrecy, and inclusion on
archipelagos that, both legally and metaphorically, represent permanent zones of
exclusion. Nation states exploit the legal ambiguity, economic dependency, and partial
forms of citizenship and political status on islands to advance security agendas (Mountz
2011:118). Through an analysis of European, Australian, and North American islands,
she shows how various technologies are used to monitor, direct, conceal, and exploit
asylum seekers. Mountz also draws on the notion of haunting, a concept articulated by
Gordon (1997), to demonstrate sovereign efforts to disorient, isolate, and confuse
migrants both geographically as well as legally in their attempts to struggle against their
predicament. In sum, offshoring to islands plays a central role in the Agambenian
necessity of sovereign power of exclusion through inclusion.
There are a number of theoretical and conceptual complications in these poststructuralist studies. By not specifying actors in the process of legal discourse in the
creation of detention centres as zones of exemption, post-structuralist scholars tend to
posit a functionalist argument susceptible to teleological thinking (Mouzelis 2003). In
other words, the outcomes they seek to explain are transformed into social causes. Their
premise is that detention centres play a central logic in the underlying dialectic of the
stateits power to extend freedoms, rights, and ultimately to define human life is
premised by denying the same to others. According to this circular thinking, we should
see the enclosure of certain human beings not as an anomaly of the logic of
contemporary sovereignty, but a normal outcome of this logic (Rajaram and GrundyWarr 2004:36). Similarly, Tsoukala (2011:195) writes that the creation of these zones of
exception should not come as a surprise to asylum seekers, refugees, and economic
immigrants because exclusion underlies sovereignty; freedom of movement becomes
the new criterion for exclusion; and the exception is the necessary condition for the
establishment of new zones that will further confirm sovereignty.
If this type of argumentation was to hold, then logically we should also expect to see its
opposite: failure to create explicit zones of exception should weaken states and
potentially lead to their collapse. But, in fact, there is no inherent necessity for the state
to deny rights to the other in order to be able to uphold the rights of its members, a fact
that is demonstrated in part by the lack of the immigration detention regimes in certain
parts of the world, most notably in South America (see, for example, Ecuador in Global
Detention Project 2015).
Arguably, immigration policiesincluding the use of detention centresstem not from
the invariant exercise of state power but from exceptional circumstances and changing
politico-economic conditions. A political economy perspective of immigration in the
Americas and Europe focuses more on the rising and falling demand for labour during
times of economic expansion and contraction than the inexorable requirement of the
6

state to perform the power of granting and restricting rights. Increasing immigration
controls, the rise of nativist sentiments, and the criminalization of foreign aliens, in turn,
occur during times of economic decline (Hall et al. 1978) or possibly as efforts to keep
labour costs down by keeping a segment of the work force without political rights and
under threat. Nor does the state see refugees as an inherent risk to itself. This contrasts
with the view of refugees as representing an inherent risk to sovereignty: their intention
of moving freely beyond state controls turn them into politically threatening figures since
they blur the newly established differences between populations which are advantaged
and disadvantaged, socially and economically (Tsoukala 2011:196). The post-structural
view overlooks the variation in even democratic countries, from Argentina to Australia, in
terms of their detention policies and operations
The failure to specify actors involved in the creation of detention centres and associated
policies also represents a teleological error in post-structuralist accounts. Disembodied
notions of the state or sovereign power tend to substitute the role and intentions of
actors classifying sets of people as illegal, constructing systems of control, and operating
detention centres. For example, Bigo (2007:11) writes that the will of the sovereign
power is to dissociate the relations of power and to localize it in the hands of the
sovereign. Analysing the discourses of government ministers and agencies portrays
them as unreflective actors expressing the underlying logic of the functional necessity of
the state. Similarly, Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (2004:43) cite the following passage from
Australias Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs as evidence
of their argument: Australia is a sovereign country which decides who can and who
cannot enter and stay on its territory. Only Australian citizens have the unrestricted right
to travel freely in and out of the countryall other people must have a legal authority in
the form of a visa. The decontextualized discourses fail to associate the concrete
conditions to which actors respond, frame, and legitimate state power.
Another problem with post-structural views of immigrant detention is the conflation of
citizenship rights with human rights. These critical perspectives highlight a contradiction
faced by liberal democracies; that is, restricting the rights of a certain groups while at the
same time holding such rights as core values. In fact, the restriction of such rights belies
a certain discomfort and shame for regimes professing certain alienable rights (Flynn
2013). But citizenship rights are not the same as human rights, even though the
conception of human rights grew out of the experience of citizenship rights. Still,
citizenship rights refer to the relationship of rights and obligations between states and
citizens deriving from membership in a political community. Human rights, on the other
hand, are claims to human dignity with universal application regardless of ones
nationality or citizenship status. Nation-states remain the principal agents for upholding
human rights as well as guaranteeing specific citizenship rights. While nation-states
often are major human rights violators, they also shoulder the primary responsibility in
upholding rights. In contrast, the international human rights community plays a key role
in promoting normative frameworks and pressuring states to fulfil promises.
Failure to specify human and citizenship rights leads to empirical pitfalls. According to
Rajarm and Grundy-Warr (2004), based on the Agambens logic, the state strips
humanity of its human rights by creating zones where people have no recourse to legal
systems or rights claims. The territorialisation of life means that the refugee is put in a
position where she lacks apportioned rights but depends on the charity or goodwill of aid
workers or the police. The refugee is outside the law (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr
2004:41). But in fact, and in contrast to this claim, refugees, as well as other non-citizen
detainees, generally have recourse to clear set of laws and legal remedies, even if their
specific legal status often restricts their ability to access these remedies and many
countries are notorious for their failure to guarantee access to justice. Moreover, there
are regional systems, for example at the level of the European Community, as well as
7

international treaties, governing the treatment of immigrants and setting positive norms
for treatment of non-citizens. In critique of Agamben, Wilsher (2011:302) notes: Where
they have suffered serious breaches of their civil rights, by being detained without lawful
authority, [immigration detainees] have not been denied access to justice to sue for
damages or to challenge the legality of detention. In this sense they retain legal
personality. Civil damages have also been awarded where detainees have suffered
serious harm by reason of the conditions of detention. The problem is differential
citizenship status not the lack of rights per se that provides a necessary condition for
human rights abuses. According a reduced set of rights to immigrant detainees is more a
necessary condition than a sufficient one for the rise of detention centres and associated
abuses that occurs within.
The causal logic of post-structural accounts sees abuses resulting from the creation of
zones of exception necessary for the establishment of sovereign power. Agamben
(1998:174) sees detainee mistreatment as necessarily resulting from the creation of a
space in which the normal order is de facto suspended and in which whether or not
atrocities are committed depends not on law but on the civility and ethical sense of the
police who temporarily act as sovereign (Agamben 1998:174). Similarly, Tsoukala
(2011:193) argues that police abuseincluding physical and psychological abuse
stems from young, inexperienced police officials who are excessively zealous in order to
satisfy their hierarchical superior officers. But instead of seeing abuse resulting, as she
claims, from inclusive exclusion, these assertions draw our attention towards the way in
which human rights violations are associated with the nature of the organizations
constructed to manage human flows. In effect, they argue a form of methodological
individualism on the one hand and the diffuse notion of sovereign power on the other.
What is missing is an understanding of how abuse and mistreatment occur as a result of
the function of complex organizations.
Immigration Detention through the Lens of Bureaucratic Capitalism
In economic sociology, the central problematic of contemporary immigration detention
regimes is not the inexorable impulse of sovereignty to demonstrate its power through
inclusive exclusion. Rather, it begins with the premise that complex organizations are a
fact of life in modern society. For good or bad, they play a central role in social
reproduction through the management, production, and distribution of goods, resources,
and other necessities. Complex organizations reflect the underlying social structure and
distribution of power in society, including class relations and social status, as well as
embody specific cultural attributes such as values and norms (Portes 2006). Critically
examining the role and nature of organizations in modern life provides insights into ways
in which they either promote or abuse human rights in concrete situations. The
conceptual framework developed by sociologist Gideon Sjoberg, specifically his work on
bureaucratic capitalism, provides a useful blueprint for analysing the growth and
operations of immigration detention regimes.
Sjoberg (1999) emphasizes the role of complex organizations in shaping modern
capitalism and considers how these entities can be morally accountable. He combines
the elite-based theories of power of Domhoff, Mann, and Mills with actor-oriented
perspectives of Mead and Dewey. For Sjoberg, organizations are not reducible to the
individuals that comprise them nor can the actions of individuals within an organizational
field be adequately understood without considering the various rules and constraints in
place:
Once we recognize the role of human agents within organizational settings, two
strategic patterns can be identified. First, organizational structures cannot exist without
8

human agents; yet organizations are not reducible to human agency. The normative
order, as well as the economic and political resources of organizations, has a reality
apart from any particular set of human agents. Second, if we take account of human
agents in shaping organization arrangements, we discover that the end product (or the
official reality) can be constructed by somewhat different sets of activities (Sjoberg
1999:29).
Sjobergs approach provides a conceptual framework that is empirically driven while
retaining a critical stance that is neither deterministic nor teleological. Modern day
capitalism cannot be understood without considering the role formal organizations play in
the creation and distribution of resources that result in on-going social inequalities. We
must seek to understand the processes by which bureaucratic structures come to
support and sustain privilege, as well as the processes by which social triage is
produced, writes Sjoberg (1999:32).
In post-structuralist accounts, class inequalities typically do not become a central issue
because state power is seen as focusing on whole groups of people irrespective of their
class position. But in reality, while there are certainly exceptions, people from upper and
middle classes rarely find themselves in immigration detention. In contrast, Sjoberg
(1999:32) emphasizes that people who attain privilege do so by relying upon corporatestate organizations, and they sustain their privileges through a complex set of
organizational rules (reinforced by police power). He therefore critiques post-moderns
for their inherent relativism and diffuse notions of power that make challenging
contemporary organizational domination well-nigh impossible (Sjoberg 1999:25).
Contemporary prison systems demonstrate social triage, i.e. harm for some to the
benefit of others, which results more from human creativity than as a functional necessity
of state. The prison-industrial complex in the United States serves two functions. It
sweeps the unwanted (especially members of racial and ethnic minorities) off the
streets, and it provides a stable market for producers of a rather wide range of goods
and services, contends Sjoberg (1999:33). There appears to be a distinct class bias to
how immigration detention regimes are organized and targeted.
One drawback in Sjobergs schema is the inadequate development of why certain racial
and ethnic minorities intersect with class to constitute the unwanted. For example, he
notes the growing documentation surrounding race, gender, ethnicity, and lifestyle but
considers that these developments, while affecting the cosmetic make-up of
organizations, do not confront the growth of centralized bureaucratic power. This gap in
Sjobergs work reveals a strength in post-structuralist, as well as post-colonial accounts,
which draw our attention to discursive creations of the other as a key problematic. With
this caveat, we can consider how bureaucratic capitalism, especially in relation to
unwanted groups, links class-based dynamics to forms of ethno-nationalist tendencies.
In other words, we can see the increased use of immigration detention centres as a
means to profit from the active creation of vulnerable groups as exploitable commodities.
By appending critical constructions of the other to Sjobergs economic sociology we
can analyse the growth and operations of detention centres in terms of bureaucratic
capitalism in a variety of contexts. In doing so, we can highlight the tendencies that lead
to human rights abuses and consider alternative organizational arrangements.
Specifically, our analysis of the immigrant detention industry will adapt the framework
developed by Sjoberg (1999) for analysing organizations. These include the following
dimensions: the corporate-state nexus; human agency; the rationalization process;
hierarchy, blameability, and responsibility; and secrecy systems.

The Corporate-State Nexus

The focus on complex organizations as the drivers of modern capitalism helps highlight
the increasingly blurred lines between the state and corporate sectors. In effect, in most
highly industrialized orders we find hybrid organizations that are a mix of the public and
the private (Sjoberg 1999:26). While in some countries the role of the private sector is
greater than others, there are clear connections between the two. Still, the central
problematic is the comprehensive nature of these arrangements, which is particularly
evident in contemporary efforts to manage and control international migration, as
reflected in the proliferation of phrases like the migration industry (Gammeltoft-Hansen
and Srensen 2012; Hernndez-Len 2008), the illegality industry (Andersson 2014),
the xnophobie business (Rodier 2012), and the immigration industrial complex
(Fernandes 2011). For Andersson (2014:15), this industry, which is ultimately
responsible for the management of people, allows for the consideration of a dispersed
value chain, or the distinct domains in which migrant illegality is processed, packaged,
presented, and ultimately rendered profitable. Hernandez-Leon (2008:154) defines the
migration industry as the ensemble of entrepreneurs who, motivated by the pursuit of
financial gain, provide a variety of services facilitating human mobility across
international borders. For her part, Fernandes (2011:23) helps focus attention on the
control aspects of this industry, focusing particularly on the United States, where she
characterizes the immigration industrial complex as being comprised of big business
interests that have always driven immigration policy [to increase their participation] in the
enforcement of immigration law through lucrative federal contracts.
The immigration industrial complex involves many interrelated actors at various levels of
government. In the United States, state actors include ICE, the US Marshalls Service, as
well as municipal governments. In Europe, the EU sets regional policies and offers
additional funding, but member states are the primary enforcers and operators. These
public bodies interact with private actors in innumerable ways: from contracting
transportation services and procuring high-tech surveillance equipment to the purchase
of necessary utilities such as fuel, food, and supplies to run operations. Immigration
detention centres must be understood as operating within this larger network of business
opportunities. Moreover, some of the largest private actors in immigration detention are
transnational corporations that pursue contracts in the United States, Europe, and
beyond. These include publicly traded companies like the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA), GEO, MTC, Group 4 Securicor (G4S), among others. A focus on the
corporate-state nexus draws attention to the organizational arrangement of detention
within and across countries to trace resource flows, policy initiatives, and delegation of
responsibility.
Currently in the United States, for-profit companies account for nearly half of the capacity
to house immigrant detainees. According to the Detention Watch Network (n.d.), in 2009,
private-run facilities housed 15,942 people, or nearly half of the total detained population
on a daily basis (see table one). The states with the highest average daily number of
detainees included Texas (6,115), Georgia (1,804), and Arizona (1,779). Based on the
total of 383,524 people detained in 2009, at an average cost of US$122 per bed, we
could estimate that private actors acquired almost half of the US$1.7 billion spent on
immigrant detention (Detention Watch Network n.d.). These are figures at the macroeconomy of immigrant detention and do not take into consideration revenues from
suppliers, utilities, or construction companies who serve existing and build new human
warehouses. Nor are expenditures of the U.S. Marshalls Service included in the
calculation.

10

Figure Two: Private vs. Non-Private Bed Capacity, 2009

20000
15000
10000
5000
0
Private

Not Private

Not Private

Alaska Native Corporations

LCS

Emerald

Civigenics

MTC

GEO

CCA

Source: Adapted from Detention Watch Network (n.d.)

Focusing on the corporate-state nexus also draws our attention to what is commonly
referred to as the revolving door between the public and private sectors. Several
authors have noted the close ties between the private and public sectors in the U.S.
security state (Alimahomed 2014; Fernandes 2011). For example, Fernandes (2011)
details how private-sector interests played important roles in planning the creation of the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the Homeland Security Act of
2002. Although the law does not mention immigrants, DHS assumed responsibility for
federal government immigration programs. In October 2002, President Bushs Homeland
Security Advisory Council included representatives from UBS, Paine Weber, Dow
Chemical, and Eli Lilly, among others, along with business-friendly consultants from the
intelligence and law enforcement industries to plan the operations of the Department.
DHS was conceived and created in a way that made it possible for private industry to
become the driving force behind much of its operations claims Fernandes (2011:178).
The revolving door is more apparent in the case of private detention centre operator
CCA (Ackerman and Furman 2013; Feltz and Baksh 2013). Michael Conlon left his
position as the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and 22 years of public service in
1993 in order to head up Strategic Planning for the corporation. He later served as
CCAs Chief Operating Office and Executive Vice President. Kim Porter left the INS after
25 years to manage relationships with ICE. Similarly, Anthony Odom assumed the role
of managing CCAs affairs with his former employer, the US Marshalls Service. The
revolving door also operates in the opposite direction. President Bush nominated
Gustavus Puryear IV, CCAs general council, to a federal judgeship in Tennessee where
CCA is based. Circulating key personal inside and outside of government provides
seamless connections between CCA and its federal funders (Feltz and Baksh
2013:147).
The role of the private sector in Europe differs from the U.S. experience in part because
of the formers less centralized immigration governance structure. The Schengen
Agreement, eradicating borders within the European Community while simultaneously
strengthening external borders, took effect in 1995. Currently, the European Union (EU)
adopts regional directives and norms but member states retain overall responsibility for
conducting programmatic actions related to migration matters. When analysing the
degree of privatization across European member states and in the United States, Menz
(2011) connects the increasing neoliberal economic policy environment to increased
11

privatization. He argues that variation in neoliberalism (similar to variation in capitalism)

accounts for extensive privatization of immigrant detention in the UK, Australia, and the
United States on the one hand and the lack thereof in Germany and the Netherlands on
the other. The underlying rational, according to him, is the belief in the alleged efficiency
of the private sector grounded in a neoliberal ideology. Initial contracts with the private
sector create a path dependent situation that perpetuates the role of the private sector in
the managing detention centres (Menz 2011).
While the ideological persuasion of policymakers cannot be underestimated, the
situation in Europe is more complex than an either/or dichotomy along variations of
neoliberalism predicated on path dependent models. Flynn and Cannon (2009),
reviewing the cases of the Germany, Italy, and Sweden (as well as South Africa),
demonstrate the various reasons and motivations for out-sourcing. In fact, government
agencies in Portugal and France contract private, not-for-profit organizations to provide a
range of services to detainees, including social, legal, and psychological counselling,
while Italy outsources the management of detention facilities to the Red Cross. Back in
the United States, municipal governments have looked to immigrant detention as a
means to generate additional resources by placing detainees in local jail cells, often
appearing to operate under a similar logic of the private sector (Conlon and Hiemstra
2014; Welch 2002).
The diversity of organizational arrangements raises two important issues. First, the
varied operations of detention centres reveal how complex organizations could
potentially operate in ways that result in fewer incidences of abuse and offer more
supportive services. While charitable organizations also face pressures similar to the
private sector, including securing resources, cost-benefit concerns, etc., they also tend
to operate according to a different logic. Secondly, the role of the private sector in
immigrant detention should not only be seen as an irreversible tendency predicted by
Menzs path dependent models. They can also be viewed through the conceptual lens of
policy-making as a form of recurrent problem solving (see Haydu 2010; Howlett and
Rayner 2006). Accordingly, human agencythe capacity to creatively address changing
circumstances and interact with differing institutional legaciesplays a central role in
understanding the proliferation of immigration detention and its alternatives.
Human Agency
To understand bureaucratic capitalism, Sjoberg (1999) emphasizes that human beings
are reflective, engage in calculative rationality, create typologies, pursue parts-whole
logic, and undertake a diverse array of social and interpretative actions. Within
organizational fields, humans interact with norms and rules in creative ways, but such
creativity depends on ones position in an organization and institutional field. Most
notably, rule creators at the top of an organization employ holistic reasoning in their
strategic decision-making when considering their organizations future trajectory. Holistic
rationality, emphasizing corporate efficiency at the expense of individual members, plays
a central role in organizational development and sustainability (Sjoberg 1999). In the
search of new revenue streams, human actors set goals and develop strategies to
achieve their objectives while legitimating their actions, such as through neoliberal
ideologies. Understanding the role of human agency allows us to focus on the different
strategies played by actors along the corporate-state nexus. These include efforts to
change policies governing the out-sourcing of immigration detention, negotiations
involving contracting agreements, and the re-interpretation of the terms of these
agreements.

12

Ackerman and Furman (2013) highlight three ways by which private interests influence
policies related to immigrant detention in the United States. First, campaign contributions
seek to influence politicians. Between 1998 and 2012, private prison operators donated
US$900,000 to politicians at the federal level and US$6 million at the state level. More
donations occurred at the state level, especially in the states of California and Texas, to
influence state criminal laws. CCA has also used political action committees to funnel
resources to politicians on the House Committee on Homeland Security (Feltz and
Baksh 2013). Second, CCA, GEO, and other entities, including the sectors industry
association, the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations, pay
lobbyists to ensure that bills at the federal and state expand the use of private prisons.
The firms that contract with ICE spent over US$20 million on lobbying between 1999 and
2009. Figure Three details the lobbying expenditures of just CCA. The third strategy
involves the use of policy-making networks. Private prison operators pay millions to
members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which proposes
legislation, sets up dedicated task forces, and provides a space for lobbyists, politicians,
and the private sector to gather (Ackerman and Furman 2013). Comparable strategies
and policy-making networks exist in the UK, including activities by CCAs local affiliate
and the neoliberal think tank Adam Smith Institute (Menz 2011).
Figure Three: Total Corporate Lobbying Expenditures by CCA in US Dollars, 1998-2009

4,000,000
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Source: OpenSecrets.org (2015)

While these private operators claim they are not attempting to influence legislation
related to criminal justice, the evidence suggests otherwise (Ackerman and Furman
2013; Feltz and Baksh 2013). First, legislation and policies have increasingly
criminalized immigration. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act of 1996 expanded criteria for state authorities to detain and deport immigrants. In
2004, the Bush administration zealously began to implement the Act of 1996 resulting in
demand for beds outstripping installed capacity. The DHS initiated a program called
catch-and-release, but conservative critiques of the policy led to change towards
catch-and-return. The new policy, called the Secure Borders Initiative, placed suspects
in detention before appearing before an immigration judge. Additional policies, including
ICEs 287(g) and Secure Communities program, were developed to allegedly target
immigrants with felony convictions through cooperation agreements between federal
agencies and local law enforcement. However, these efforts ended up arresting a
disproportionate number of low-level offenders, including those guilty just of traffic
13

violations (Feltz and Baksh 2013; Young 2011). Also, legislative initiatives at the state
level, such as Arizonas controversial SB1070, have been modelled on ALECs policy
blueprint "No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act. While ICE (2009:11) states
that it focuses primarily on dangerous and repetitive criminal aliens, the agency lists the
majority of book-ins, or those taken into custody, as non-criminals. Part of the reason
for high-rates of incarceration and deportation of foreigners convicted of minor crimes
includes ICEs quotas. The DHS Appropriations Act of 2010 first introduced a bed quota
of 33,400, and subsequent years have kept similar mandates on the number of detained.
Additionally, internal documents revealed that the agency specified a target of 400,000
deportations a year (Young 2011).
Rationalization, Efficiency, and Division of Labour
Fundamental to bureaucratic capitalism are the emergence of systems to reduce costs
and expand sales by a more efficient use of division of labour. While lobbying, corporate
donations, and policy networks can affect laws and policies to increase overall detention
ratesi.e. the macro-economies of detentionrationalization processes seek to
streamline operations for service provision through a division of labour, the microeconomy of detention. At one level, out-sourcing of immigration detention can be seen
as increasing division of labour across the corporate-state nexus, similar to different
forms of intra-firm trade carried out between different branches of a large corporation. At
another level, the various organizational units along this human value chainbe it a
private corporation like CCA or a local public jailinclude management, human
resources, accounting, among other activities. In these roles, human beings creatively
achieve organizational goals that range from positively portraying a corporate face to the
public while at the same time inventing ways to maximize rents. While much of the
rationale for outsourcing assumes that private detention operators have built-in motives
to provide adequate services, seeing human actors as balancing competing goals of
acceptable treatment of the human product on the one hand while at the same time
taking advantage of captive labour on the other provides more nuance to varied
situations. For example, McDonald (1994:42) argues: At least during the early stages of
contracting, there appear to be certain disincentives to diminish services: if performance
falls below agreed-upon standards firms risk losing contracts and clients. But this
argument does not take into account rationalization processes internal to detention
centres as well as some of the complexities of detention centre contracting in the
countries like the United States.
Studies on the internal economies of immigration detention centres show how they
appear to save tax payer resources by reducing costs through the over-exploitation of
captive labour (Burnett and Chebe 2010; Conlon and Hiemstra 2014). Conlon and
Hiemstra (2014) highlight how public prisons in the New York metropolitan area that
include immigration operations reduce costs and generate additional revenue by creating
micro-economies that are exploited by private contractors (important to note that while
their stated focus is immigration detention, the arguments they advance arguably apply
to criminal prison operations and not immigration detention strictly speaking). One way
that detention providers profit is by restricting access to goods and services that
detainees want or desire then selling such items at greatly inflated prices. Inmates are
also forced to pay exorbitant rates for services like phone calls, paying up to 20 times
prevailing rates. One example is the New Jerseys Essex County governments
telephone contract with Global Tel*Link at a commission rate of 54 percent, which
translates into an annual income of US$925,000. Operators also use detainee labour,
considered a privilege for the incarcerated, to reduce their overhead costs of facility
maintenance and operations. Courts have upheld the right to pay detainees US$1-3 per
day which, according to one estimate, translated into US$5-6 million in savings for one
14

187-bed facility. Lastly, the authors discuss the subcontracting of detainee labour to
private interests. These economies show that detained migrants social reproduction
their needs and daily routinesare tailored in ways that produce migrants as both
captive consumers and labourers. Theirs is a captivity borne of a continued securitization
of immigration, where migrants are relentlessly criminalized and dehumanized in ways
that turn them into targets for the extraction of profit, summarize (Conlon and Hiemstra
2014:342).
There are striking parallels between the United States and the United Kingdom in
pursuing micro-economic rationalization processes. A study by Burnett and Chebe
(2010) uncovered wages of 1-1.25 an hour and sometimes less paid to detainees for
carrying out the basic upkeep and day-to-day operations of detention facilities. In turn,
basic items, as well as phone cards, are sold back to detainees at greatly inflated prices.
And similarly to the U.S. case, awarding paid labour is framed as a privilege and can be
rescinded at any moment. In one case, the private contractor G4S paid detainee
labourers vouchers that are only redeemable for items it provides. Burnett and Chebe
(2010:101) write:
There is a fundamental and obvious irony in that people who are prohibited from
working as a result of their immigration status can be put in conditions where, if detained,
they have to accept exploitative working practices. This is highlighted further when
considering the fact that, on the one hand, the government is massively increasing
resources and personnel to investigate and prevent undocumented working whilst, on
the other, it is sanctioning conditions in IRCs that have many of the hallmarks of
undocumented working.
Regardless of private versus public control of the detention facility, operators have
discovered ways to exploit captive labour to reduce costs and maximize rents, all the
while without decreasing services to agreed-upon standards.
Needless to say, rationalization processes have translated into tremendous revenue
gains for private contractors and for entrepreneurial public governments. Overexploitative labour combined with lucrative contracts provides healthy profit margins.
According to Fernandes (2011:194), in 2005 the average time a detainee spent in
detention from arrest to deportation was 42.5 days. DHS paid on average $85 per day,
translating into $3612 per detainee. In 2005, CCA estimated that it spends $28.89 per
inmate per day and profits $50.26 for each inmate per day (Fernandes 2011). CCA was
close to bankruptcy before 9/11 hit. With increasing crimmigration and use of its
detention facilities, the companys stock prices, revenues, and profits have skyrocketed.
Between 2012 and 2014, the companys revenue hovered around US$1.7 billion and net
profits between $150-300 million on annual basis. The GEO group operates 106 facilities
with a capacity of around 85,500 beds in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and
South Africa. Its revenues have steadily increased from US$1.1 billion to US$1.5 billion
between 2011 and 2013 along with net income increasing from US$63.5 million to
US$115 million during the same period.2

Figures were taken from financial reporting websites, such as finance.yahoo.com and
www.google.com/finance.
15

Hierarchy, Blameability, and Responsibility

Many observers of immigration detention see outsourcing detention to private actors or
to sub-national governmental entities as a form of delegating responsibility to reduce
costs and avoid legal issues (Flynn and Cannon 2009; Lahav 1998; Menz 2011).
Regarding European practices, Lahav (1998) writes:
These shifts in implementation to private, local, or international arrangements reflect
less an abdication of state sovereignty, than an experiment in which national states
involve agents as part of rational attempts to diminish the costs of migration. These
strategies aim to enhance the political capacity of states to regulate migration, to make
states more flexible and adaptable to all types of migration pressures, to shift the focus
of responsiveness, and to generate more effective state legitimacy.
Out-sourcing occurs not only to achieve efficiency and flexibility but also to shift blame
and legal burdens. In fact, most countries define immigration detention not under
criminal law but under administrative law. Nonetheless, implementing said law can
involve potentially aggressive forms of direct interaction with detainees (Menz 2011).
Along the corporate-state nexus, specific forms of hierarchy and blameability within an
organization must be considered. Specifically, there are more rules and constraints for
those at the bottom of the hierarchy than for those at the top. Elite managers can
delegate blame and responsibility on subordinates. When problems arise, those at the
lowest end of the hierarchy face the direst circumstances, including job insecurity, dismal
pay, and punitive action. Within an organization setting social triage occurs, whereby
the most vulnerable are sacrificed at the expense of the privileged. Sjoberg (1999:33)
writes that people with the least knowledge of the system must interact with those
organizational personnel who are the most constrained by the normative rules. In other
words, immigrants with the least knowledge of immigration laws and bureaucracies face
those who often come from a lower socio-economic status in the home country who
obtain formal employment. Thus, resources flow upwards in a bureaucratic organization
by placing disadvantaged sectors of society against each other. Needless to say, there
typically is a racial or ethnic division at the inter-personal level between the detention
officials and detainees. Lastly, employees at detention centres tend to receive
inadequate training and thus leading to several human rights abuses (Bacon 2005).
Practically every study on immigrant detention highlights the various human rights
violations and abuses that occur within facilities. Instead of seeing these abuses as a
form of homo sacer, or bare life, according to the followers of Agamben, a focus on the
sociology of organizations sees the problem rooted in specific organizational
arrangements. Through the corporate-state nexus, human agents interpret changes in
rules governing the management of human beings, find ways to maximize revenue, and
construct hierarchical systems to delegate responsibility to underpaid and undertrained
detention staff responsible for managing and controlling asylum seekers and irregular
immigrants depicted as the other. Still, there is some variation in cases of abuse.
Central to the issue of abuses is the degree of transparency.
Secrecy Systems
Secrecy systems are both formal and informal. Formal systems include state and
corporate secrets while the informal include the ways in which people within
organizations attempt to monopolize information in order to protect themselves. The
former typically occurs to fend off attacks from outside groups and organizations, while
the informal operate as buffers between managers and their subordinates along lines of
16

hierarchical control, responsibility, and blameability. We should not underestimate the

power of secrecy arrangements; they are often the basis of corporate fraud or
governmental malfeasance (yes, even the violation of human rights), contends Sjoberg
(2009:168). Consequently, it is not surprising that various scholars and activists have
noted the degree of secrecy or silence surrounding immigration detention centres. For
example, a central mission of the Global Detention Project (GDP), an organization
dedicated to mapping out the global detention around the world, is to obtain access to
data about these centres and increase transparency in the treatment of detainees. The
GDP sees transparency as a fundamental element in any effort to check the spread of
detention practices based on the premise that states seek to shield immigration
detention from scrutiny because it challenges their claims to liberal orthodoxy,
particularly with respect to the right to liberty (Flynn 2013).
The two main issues governing the flow of information in bureaucratic organizations
concern accounting mechanisms and reports on abuses. While various insiders may
know the flow of funds and resources across the state-corporate nexus, the lack of
transparency to outsiders remains a significant problem. Contracts between government
entities with private operators or sub-national bureaus often remain shrouded in secrecy.
Additionally, access to detention centres remains severely restricted, and in turn
detainees lack access to legal assistance and non-governmental support organizations
and their families. Restricting access can be seen as a means to protect the range of
abuses that occur with detention centres.
Despite similarities in secrecy systems at detention centres in the United States and in
the European Union, there are distinct approaches in terms of monitoring and
supervision given the embedded principal-agent relationships between central
authorities and operators. In the EU, international organizations and supra-national
bodies, such as the Council of Europes Committee on the Prevention of Torture, engage
in extensive surveillance and oversight of detention operators. According to Flynn and
Cannon (2009), significant influence is exerted on some countries after official visits are
made by such organizations, obliging them to provide detailed responses to each point
of concern raised. In fact, they note that a private security company operating a
detention centre in the German state of Eisenhuttenstadt centre has been praised by
activists and scholars alike for its conditions. In the United States, the situation appears
differently. ICE often plays the role of both contractor and supervisor. Despite a
consistent string of detainee abuses occurring in facilities operated by CCA and other
private corporations, ICE continues to renew their contracts (Young 2011).
Conclusion
The growth in immigration detention and the magnitude of funding states dedicate to
warehousing asylum seekers and irregular migrants continues to grow, despite the lack
of evidence demonstrating their efficacy in disrupting immigration flows or in ensuring the
presence of individuals before an immigration judge. Post-structuralists argue that
detention centres represent a contemporary way in which sovereignty demonstrates its
power to exclude through inclusion. In other words, state power carves out legal and
physical spaces to control the movement of non-citizens while at the same time
abusively restricting their rights. While this theoretical approach has some merits, a
number of theoretical problems with the approach lead to problematic policy
prescriptions. Most notable are the use of teleological arguments, a tight focus on
discourses divorced from actors, and the conflation of citizenship and human rights.
It should not be surprising that given their approach, post-structuralists suggest
contradictory and confusing policy suggestions. Agamben (2000) argues that the
17

concept of refugee should be divorced from the concept of human rights, since states fail
to protect such persons accordingly. Rajaram and Warr (2004) also highlight the
inadequacy of nation-states to protect refugees based on the 1951 Convention relating
to the Status of Refugees. They argue: Protection of irregular migrants must then begin
with a re-questioning of the concept and limits of human rights and must then be
devised in such a way that this protection does not become the principle or sole
responsibility of the nation-state (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2004:59). A new
independent tribunal, they argue, should be set up to adjudicate whether irregular
migrants obtain the protections based on alternative international rights instruments such
as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on the
Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers. This suggestion may have some merits,
but still leaves open questions of implementation and the role of the nation-state. If
sovereign power is the problem, then is it not necessary to question the existence of the
sovereign? On the other hand, we have seen that alternative organization arrangements
between regional and local players, as the case of Germany, can produce some level of
improvement.
Compared to the post-structuralist perspective, a focus on the nature and composition of
complex organization is the central problematic for understanding the immigration
detention-related abuses. Accordingly, the state is both problem and solution, and so too
are other large-scale organizations like for-profit corporations and even not-for-profit
entities. A focus on what Sjoberg (1999) calls bureaucratic capitalism offers insight into
the impact of global capitalism and provides tools for examining how corporations
influence the state yet remain dependent on the state. Across the corporate-state nexus
humans creatively act to change policies, enact rules, and reinterpret mandates.
Through a social division of labour, rationalization processes seek efficiency to maximize
resources for the organization. Hierarchical relations, out-sourcing of responsibility, and
opportunities for blameability can result in various forms of abuse, but a key determinant
is the degree of transparency. All these factors not only help us understand the
operations of immigration detention centres but also offer possible solutions to redress
abuse and correct human rights violations, including forms of social triage through
which socially marginalized populations suffer to the benefit of elites groups.
If organizational arrangements are the problem, then a version of human rights that goes
beyond individualistic notions of human rights must be employed. For Sjoberg (2001:42),
human rights are social claims made by individuals (or groups) upon organized power
arrangements for the purpose of enhancing human dignity. Such an approach seeks to
make organizations morally accountable, be they nominally operated by the state or
private sector. On one level we must consider whether some activities of the social
control industry should even be profitable, such as immigrant detention. But as we have
seen, this is only part of the problem since publicly operated jails also seek new forms of
revenue generation. Arguably, there is a need for a more radical restructuring of the
immigration detention complex to ensure that government agencies and their subcontractors are better held to account with respect to their efforts to uphold the rights of
immigrants and asylum seekers. On the other hand, given the inherent, deep-seated
nature of some of the problems associated with detention regimes, it seems more
reasonable to argue that the best way forward is to resort to remedies that fall short of
incarceration, rethinking the entire underlying rationales that have given rise to this
unfortunate and paradoxical phenomenon.

18

References
Ackerman, Alissa R. and Rich Furman. 2013. The Criminalization of Immigration and the
Privatization of the Immigration Detention: Implications for Justice. Contemporary
Justice Review 16(2):25163.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer. Torino: G. Einaudi, c1995-.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Alimahomed, S. 2014. Homeland Security Inc.: Public Order, Private Profit. Race & Class
55(4):8299.
Andersson, Ruben. 2014. Illegality, Inc. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Retrieved
February 11, 2015 (http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520282520).
Bacon, C. 2005. The Evolution of Immigration Detention in the UK: The Involvement of Private
Prison Companies. Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper No. 27. Department of
International Development, University of Oxford.
Bigo, Didier. 2007. Detention of Foreigners, States of Exception, and the Social Practices of
Control of the Banopticon. in Borderscapes: hidden geographies and politics at
territorys edge / Prem Kumar Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr, editors, Borderlines: v. 29,
edited by P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Burnett, Jon and Fidelis Chebe. 2010. Captive Labour: Asylum Seekers, Migrants and
Employment in UK Immigration Removal Centres. Race & Class 51(4):95103.
Castles, Stephen. 2003. Towards a Sociology of Forced Migration and Social Transformation.
Sociology 37(1):1334.
Castles, Stephen, Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller. 2013. The Age of Migration: International
Population Movements in the Modern World. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Conlon, D. and N. Hiemstra. 2014. Examining the Everyday Micro-Economies of Migrant
Detention in the United States. Geographica Helvetica 69(5):33544.
Detention Watch Network. n.d. The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in Immigration
Detention. Retrieved February 22, 2015
(http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/privateprisons).
Edwards, Alice. 2011. Back to Basics: The Right to Liberty and Security of Person and
Alternatives to Detention of Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, Stateless Persons and Other
Migrants. Geneva: UNHCR.
Feltz, R. and Baksh. 2013. Business of Detention. in Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders,
and Global Crisis, edited by J. M. Loyd, M. Mitchelson, and A. Burridge. University of
Georgia Press.
Fernandes, Deepa. 2011. Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration. New
York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

19

Flynn, Michael. 2013. The Hidden Costs of Human Rights: The Case of Immigration Detention.
Retrieved February 28, 2015
(http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/publications/working-papers/hidden-
costs.html).
Flynn, Michael and Cecilia Cannon. 2009. The Privatization of Immigration Detention: Towards a
Global View. Geneva: Global Detention Project. Retrieved February 22, 2015
(http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/fileadmin/docs/GDP_PrivatizationPaper_Final5
.pdf).
Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas and Ninna Nyberg Srensen, eds. 2012. The Migration Industry
and the Commercialization of International Migration. New York, NY: Routledge.
Giorgio Agamben. 2000. Beyond Human Rights. P. 15 in Means Without End: Notes on Politics,
Theory Out Of Bounds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Global Detention Project. 2015. Ecuador Detention Profile. Global Detention Project. Retrieved
(http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/ecuador/introduction.html
).
Gordon, Avery. 1997. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination / Avery F.
Gordon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c1997.
Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts. 1978. Policing the
Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Haydu, J. 2010. Reversals of Fortune: Path Dependency, Problem Solving, and Temporal Cases.
Theory and Society 39(1):2548.
Hernndez-Len, Rubn. 2008. Metropolitan Migrants: The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the
United States. 1 edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Howlett, Michael and Jeremy Rayner. 2006. Understanding the Historical Turn in the Policy
Sciences: A Critique of Stochastic, Narrative, Path Dependency and Process-Sequencing
Models of Policy-Making over Time. Policy Sciences 39(1):118.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 2009. Immigration Detention Overview and
Recommendations. Washington, DC: Office of Homeland Security.
Lahav, Gallya. 1998. Immigration and the State: The Devolution and Privatisation of
Immigration Control in the EU. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (4):p675.
McDonald. 1994. Public Imprisonment by Private Means: The ReReemergencerivate Prisons
and Jails in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. British Journal of
Criminology 34(special issue):2848.
Menz, Georg. 2011. Neo-Liberalism, Privatization and the Outsourcing of Migration
Management: A Five-Country Comparison. Competition & Change 15(2):11635.
Migreurop. n.d. The Principal Spaces of Detention. Retrieved February 20, 2015
(http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/Carte_Atlas_Migreurop_8012013_Version_anglais
e_version_web.pdf).
20

Mountz, Alison. 2011. The Enforcement Archipelago: Detention, Haunting, and Asylum on
Islands. Political Geography 30(3):11828.
Mouzelis, Nicos. 2003. Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong?: Diagnosis and Remedies.
Routledge.
OpenSecrets.org. 2015. Corrections Corp of America. Retrieved May 8, 2015
(http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021940).
Portes, Alejandro. 2006. Institutions and Development: A Conceptual Analysis. Population and
Development Review 32(2):23362.
Rajaram, Prem Kumar and Carl Grundy-Warr. 2004. The Irregular Migrant as Homo Sacer:
Migration and Detention in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. International Migration
42(1):3364.
Rodier, Claire. 2012. Xnophobie business: quoi servent les contrles migratoires? LA
DECOUVERTE.
Sampson, J. 2015. Does Detention Deter? International Detention Coalition. Retrieved June 16,
2015 (http://idcoalition.org/detentiondatabase/does-detention-deter/).
Sjoberg, Gideon. 1999. Observations on Bureaucratic Capitalism. Pp. 2335 in Sociology for the
Twenty-first Century: Continuities and Cutting Edges, edited by J. L. Abu-Lughod.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Sjoberg, Gideon. 2009. Corporations and Human Rights. Pp. 15776 in Intepreting Human
Rights - Social Science Perspective, edited by R. Morgan and B. Turner. Hoboken:
Routledge.
Sjoberg, Gideon, Elizabeth A. Gill, and Norma Williams. 2001. A Sociology of Human Rights.
Social Problems 48(1):1147.
Tsoukala, Anastassia. 2011. The Administrative Detention of Foreigners in France. An Expanding
Network of Exclusionary Spaces. in The Police, State, and Society: Perspectives from
India and France, edited by M. A. K. Pearson Education India.
Welch, Michael. 2002. Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Jail Complex.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002.
Wilsher, Daniel. 2011. Immigration Detention: Law, History, Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Young, Rick. 2011. Lost in Detention. Frontline. Retrieved February 23, 2015
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/lost-in-detention/).

21